Author: Hilary Mantel
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 653
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0-00-735355-3
Description
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The Pope and most of Europe oppose him. The quest for the petulant king’s freedom destroyed his advisor, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum and a deadlock.
Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a bully and a charmer, Cromwell has broken all the rules of a rigid society in his rise to power, and is prepared to break some more Rising from the ashes of personal disaster – the loss of his young family and of Wolsey, his beloved patron – he picks his way deftly through a court where ‘man is wolf to man.’ Pitting himself against parliament, the political establishment and the papacy, he is prepared to reshape England to his own and Henry’s desires.
From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage.
REVIEW
‘One of Literature’s greatest living Talents at the Height of her powers’
- Sunday Telegraph
‘Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,’ says Thomas More, ‘and when you come back that right he’ll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks; tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.’
Contents
Cast of Characters
Family Trees
PART ONE
I Across the Narrow Sea. 1500
II Paternity. 1527
III At Austin Friars. 1527
PART TWO
I Visitation. 1529
II An Occult History of Britain. 1521 – 1529
III Make or Mar. All Hallows. 1529
PART THREE
I Three-Card Trick. Winter 1529 – Spring 1530
II Entirely Beloved Cromwell. Spring – December 1530
III The Dead Complain of Their Burial. Christmastide 1530
PART FOUR
I Arrange Your Face. 1531
II ‘Alas, What Shall I DO For Love?’ Spring 1532
III Early Mass. November 1532
PART FIVE
I Anna Regina. 1533
II Devil’s Spit. Autumn and winter 1533
III A Painter’s Eye. 1534
PART SIX
I Supremacy. 1534
II The Map of Christendom. 1534-1535
III To Wolf Hall. July 1535
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements